Consistent with research on interpersonal love (see Fehr
2006, 2009), we find that brand love, as consumers experi- ence it, is best represented as a higher-order construct including multiple cognitions, emotions, and behaviors, which consumers organize into a mental prototype. These include, but go beyond, brand attachment (Thomson, MacInnis, and Park 1995) and self–brand connections (Escalas and Bettman 2003). Using survey data, we then develop a valid and parsimonious structural equations model of the brand love prototype that, because of its grounding in the two qualitative studies, uses significantly broader emotional and self-related constructs than prior work (e.g., a sense of natural comfort and fit, a feeling of emotional connectedness and bonding, a deep integration with a consumer’s core values, a heightened level of desire and interaction, a commitment to its long-term use, attitude valence and strength). We show that our multicomponent model of the brand love prototype greatly expands under- standing of the consumer experience of brand love. It also explains more of the variation in repeat purchase intention, positive WOM, and resistance to negative information about the brand than a summary measure of brand love. Through this richer understanding of brand love, we gain insight into how brand liking can potentially be changed into brand love, and we draw theoretical and managerial implications.